


Dead Flight

by ziusura



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Ghosts, Outer Space, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziusura/pseuds/ziusura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica had been picking up a box of ammunition for a regularly scheduled training session when she came across a ghost and was sucked into the world of the supernatural. The Deliverance didn’t get much action out in space, but hell, Erica always knew she’d be a part of something bigger in life. Boyd was just an added bonus. </p><p>Written for <a href="http://sarahsan.livejournal.com/">sarahsan</a> for <a href="http://tw-holidays.livejournal.com/">Teen Wolf Holidays</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Flight

There were ghosts on the ship. Like honest to God _ghosts_. On a spaceship.

Erica’s karma could not have been bad enough to deserve a death by ghosts, no freaking way.

Gooseflesh rose up on Erica’s skin and her muscles froze up so bad she nearly dropped the box of ammo she was carrying. And yet through the terror there was some odd part of her brain taking delight in the fact that every horror movie she’d seen had gotten them wrong. They weren’t white sheets nor dead-eyed humans, but more like someone tried to draw a person with clouds. Wispy and undefined but still clearly people shaped. 

It took a step closer, heavy and unsure, and opened it’s mouth like it was going to say something. Erica wanted to take a step back in response, but her legs felt like someone had papermached them to the floor in some misguided art project. At least there wasn’t any glitter; she’d never get it out of her hair. 

Another step closer and Erica found her legs, or rather one leg, and slid her foot against the ground until her boot heel hit the ammo boxes behind her. Why oh why didn’t they keep the laser guns with their ammo? She didn’t know if they’d have an effect on something non-living, but she’d at least feel good knowing she had something to protect herself, since her own laser gun was trapped on her hip under the box. At the very least she could shoot it off, hope the ghost jolted or something, and run. 

Its mouth opened and closed, and its eyebrows furrowed together. “Plea...”

Erica’s hands tightened against the box edges. 

“Please...”

The words hit her ears minutes after the ghost’s mouth closed, light and closer to a whisper than anything remotely sounding like a normal voice. 

The door to the storage room Erica was in swung open when the ghost’s mouth was poised mid sentence and the ghost turned, surprised. She was almost pleased with herself knowing that if she shot off a laser in there the ghost would’ve jumped and she could have gotten away just like she thought. Shooting first and thinking later really did work well as far as she was concerned. 

The muzzle to a gun rounded the corner of the doorway and the ghost stepped forward with its palm raised upwards. It barely had time to move its mouth before the gun went off, hitting the ghost with white colored shards and throwing it back towards Erica, where it disappeared in a cloud of smoke in front of her eyes.

“Please he’s going to--” Erica heard when the smoke cleared, ears still ringing from the blast. 

There were two boys that looked about to be her age in the doorway, well one that looked her age. She wasn’t entirely sure about the one with the buzzed head and the confused look on his face. 

“Did you maybe see that?” one asked, smiling wide, and Erica felt the corners of her mouth twitch up in response. Infectious smilers were the bane of her existence sometimes when she was trying to keep her persona of coolness intact. 

Buzzed-head rolled his eyes and shoved past Smiley to get into the room. “This room’s got like a total area of five feet, Scott, you have to be blind not to--wait, you’re not blind are you?” 

Erica raised an eyebrow and shifted the box of ammo in her arms. Buzzed-head’s eyes tracked the movement and Erica caught them resting on her cleavage for a moment before they shot up to stare at her forehead. She almost laughed then. She’d never seen someone so blatant at trying not to look before. 

“I guess not,” Buzzed-head muttered, and tucked his pistol into his pants. No holster, Erica noticed. 

“Any reason why you thought it was a good idea to shoot that in here?” Erica asked, eyes resting on the boxes of ammo in the room. Sure, most of it was just laser gun ammo which was nothing more than a high powered battery really, but it wasn’t _all_ laser ammo. She did not want to be trapped in a small storage room because someone shot at the spark gun ammo and set the whole place on fire. That was not in her job description. 

Smiley--Scott, apparently--shrugged. “It’s just rocksalt.”

“And some enchanted ghost killing stones.”

Scott’s grin turned dark then, and rested on Buzzed-head. “Yeah, that your boyfr--ouch.”

Buzzed-head pulled his hand back from where he slapped the back of Scott’s head, who was frowning at the ground and rubbing his head dejectedly. “Scott, I’ve already told you we’re not like that,” Buzzed-head said, voice high-pitched, defensive. 

Buzzed-head switched over from frowning to business easily enough though, turning to Erica with a grin that looked more like he practiced it in the mirror than actually felt happy enough to smile. 

“Anyway, Scott’s _lying_ aside, you probably want to know what’s going on right?”

“Certainly wouldn’t hurt,” Erica replied, forcing her eyebrow down off her forehead and more in its general above the eye area. 

“Come with us then. We’re in C332.” 

One of the passenger rooms. Erica wondered why they were wearing the ship’s uniform then if that was the case. 

They exited the storage room with a playfulness Erica had seen and participated in whenever she and the other cannon-boys successfully shot down an asteroid in their trajectory, jostling each other with hands and embedding elbows into sides. A job well done. 

And then she was alone, and even the gentle hum of the lights used on the ship couldn’t keep her company through the roar of adrenaline in her ears. 

She turned to the stack of boxes behind her. She wasn’t going shooting like she planned then, she guessed.

“--kill us,” the voice finished in the silence even though it’s body was long gone, like a star whose light still reached the earth millions of years after its death. Kind of a depressing thought, really. 

The light above her head flickered once, then twice, and Erica set the ammo box down on the top of the stack. She’d need to file a maintenance report on the light if it didn’t stop. 

Buzzed-head poked his head around the door and raised his eyebrows at Erica. “Coming?” 

“Yeah, yeah. Pull your panties out of your crack, I’m coming.”

Erica always knew she’d be a part of something bigger in life.

\---

C332 was a standard three-bed living area, and Erica was a little jealous of the space. Her neck of the ship just had a sleeping space cut into the wall that she had to share with three other people. Her locker felt more like a living space than her room did to be honest.

Scott directed her to a chair opposite the beds, next to another guy with smudges on his uniform who looked just as excited to be there as she felt. Meaning not at all. He was handsome enough to wear his disinterest well though. 

Scott and Buzzed-head took a seat on a bed next to a pretty redheaded girl in civilian clothes. 

“So, introductions,” Buzzed-head started, rubbing his palms against his thighs. “I’m Stiles.” 

And that is quite possibly the stupidest name Erica had ever heard, and she worked on spaceship for God’s sake. There were more Stars and Galaxys on the ship than Erica had heard in her life, and she had to share a bed with a Milky-Way. 

“Lydia,” the redheaded girl said, straightening her skirt and giving Erica a look that said she knew exactly what she was thinking about Stiles’ name. 

“And I’m Scott,” Scott said. “We’re supernatural hunters.” 

Lydia scoffed and held up her hand to presumably check for faults on her nails. “You guys aren’t good enough to be upgraded to hunters yet.”

“Hey, we took care of the werewolf problem on Station 5,” Stiles said.

“Yeah, by dating--”

“No, we’re not like that!” 

“ _Any_ way. We’ve said our names. You guys are?” 

The guy next to her leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Engineer. Call me Boyd.”

The all turned expectantly towards Erica. Guess it was her turn. 

“Erica Reyes. I’m the girl who keeps this pretty ship from being destroyed every time we travel through an asteroid belt.” 

“So you’re a pilot?” Scott asked, eyes wide in excitement.

“No, I’m a gunman,” Erica said, not even bothering to hide her distaste. 

On a ship as big as the Deliverance was, pilots couldn’t do shit to avoid debris and yet they still got all the credit. Erica knew just where to hit an asteroid so that it moved off it’s path for the ship without making it break off in chunks that could potentially stay the same course. She didn’t know of any pilots that could do that. 

For all it’s worth, Scott’s excitement didn’t go down when he heard what she really was, and that was nice. She could see herself being pretty good friends with Scott if he was always that friendly. 

“So what about these ghosts?” Boyd asked, and the subject was back on track. 

Apparently Scott, Stiles, and Lydia all knew each other from high school, brought together through their unhealthy obsession with the supernatural. As far as ghosts went, Lydia preferred to exorcise by incantation, Stiles to shoot with exorcising stones, and Scott a mix of the two though he ultimately would rather lie the body to rest via salting and burning, but in space that wasn’t always possible. Through all their chatter Erica noticed one thing though: they had no idea why the ghosts were on the ship, and that was a scary thought to have when they were supposed to be the ones in the know. So pretty much they were just there to try and exorcise the lot of them in the hopes that they wouldn’t come back. Erica and Boyd weren’t meant to see, but now that they had Lydia had no qualms about getting them to help.

“What makes you think we’re going to help you?” Boyd asked after they finished, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair. Erica snorted because yeah, that was pretty much her sentiments on the matter.

Lydia smiled and uncrossed her legs, resting her heels firmly on the ground. Erica wasn’t sure she liked that look. “Because if you don’t, I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to send all these ghosts on their way and you don’t want that do you? We don’t know what these ghosts are capable of and you’re willing to let them run loose and wreak havoc on the ship? You’re right, that plan sounds so much better than joining us and taking care of them as a team.” 

Yeah, she definitely didn’t like that look, and judging by the disgruntled sound Boyd made, he didn’t like it much either. 

“Shit Lydia, pulling out the big guns,” Scott said in admiration, and Erica cracked her knuckles to keep from jolting up and punching him in the face. Or Lydia in the face. She’d be happy with either one. 

She didn’t think that the exchange of information automatically meant Erica was obligated to help them, but what the hell. Her job was more of a only-in-the-case-of-emergencies sort of thing so as long as the Deliverance didn’t get attacked or surprise space debris didn’t head their way, she could get away with being away from her post for a while. And with Erica on the job there was no way they’d lose; she was too competitive to allow anything but the best through. 

“Alright, I’ll do it,” Erica said. “Might as well liven up this bland journey, right?” 

She looked over to Boyd, who seemed to have an internal battle with himself over his choice before he said, “Right. Yeah, I’ll do it.” 

Scott cheered, Stiles grinned, and Lydia seemed indifferent, like she knew that was the only outcome. It kind of pissed Erica off that Lydia thought she was so predictable, but whatever. She wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing her angry.

\---

Erica slid her borrowed pistol into her spare holster. She wasn’t sure what the guys’ fascination with keeping it in their pants was, but holsters were convenient and she had a license to have a firearm on the ship anyway. Sure it was only for one firearm, and her laser gun at that, but she didn’t feel guilty about stretching the rules a little.

They paired her with Lydia to go on their ghost hunt, who had nothing on her but memorized incantations in six different languages. Erica felt okay with that arrangement, because while Lydia had yet to impress her as a person, Erica knew she was an asset to have on a team. 

Lydia, however, did not share that sentiment. 

”Are you guys _really_ going to put the smartest person and the only person trained to use a gun on the same team?” she asked, hands cocked on her hips.

“Boyd’s smart!” Scott insisted, gesturing at Boyd with loud movements. 

“I’m the sheriff’s son, Lydia. I know how to use a freaking gun,” Stiles said, mimicking her pose. 

Lydia snorted. “No.” 

“C’ _mon_ , Lydia.”

“No. Boyd. Scott. You two go with Erica and take the top five floors of the ship. Stiles and I will take the rest.”

“What, no Lydia,” Stiles whined but they fell to deaf ears. “C’mon, you know Scott and I are a team.”

Scott came over to stand next to Erica easily enough. He seemed a little upset that he wasn’t with Stiles, but Scott was nice and Erica was okay with that. Maybe she’d hold up on the sarcasm for a bit until he settled in. 

Boyd fiddled with his own handgun, glanced at Erica, and then pulled his head up to look at Lydia. 

“Not that I’m complaining but I figured it made sense when me and Erica have worked on this ship for so long. We know how to get around.” 

Lydia scoffed, like it was an insult to even mention such a thing. She waved him off and said, “I memorized the ship’s blueprints. We’ll be fine.”

Her word was final and she dragged Stiles off towards stairs, who looked mournfully over his shoulder at Scott. They probably didn’t get separated like that too often. 

“Alright team, you ready to move out?” Scott said cheerfully and started heading towards the cafeteria. He didn’t grab and drag like like Lydia, but considering she and Boyd weren’t Stiles, unhappy with the arrangements, he didn’t need to. 

She shot a tentative smile at Boyd and followed after Scott, turning before she saw his reaction.

\---

They hit their first set of ghosts just outside the pilot’s deck, a man and a woman both dressed up in fancy clothing like they were heading towards a dinner party. Scott and Boyd both shot at the woman, she was closer, and Erica took the man. No shot missed.

There were two witnesses, but Scott quickly spouted off a story about a game they were playing with some holochips and rocksalt and they believed him. It was so smooth that Erica figured he was pretty well versed in lying, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Stiles or Lydia were capable of if someone who seemed as friendly as Scott could lie that easily. 

“Alright guys,” Erica started when they’d moved out of earshot of the other Deliverance workers. “We need to have a chat about calling things. We wasted a bullet when both of you shot at the same target, so the rule is you call if you’re shooting the thing closest to us. Got it?” 

She slapped their backs for extra emphasis like she’d done so many times to the other cannon-boys whenever they did something she thought was stupid, and Scott shrugged her off easily. Erica imagined that was the kind of relationship he and Stiles had anyway. But Boyd? Boyd grunted when her hand hit and turned his head to look her in the eye. Erica sort of paused mid laugh because her hand was still on his back, warmth seeping into her fingertips, and she didn’t know whether she should leave it or what. But whatever she should have done, like give him an extra tap and remove her hand herself, she didn’t do because she jerked her hand back like it was burned and let out a nervous chuckle instead. 

Scott gave her a mock salute and said, “Got it, Boss.” 

And she kind of liked that, Boss. Last time she’d been called anything like that she’d been seven and barely in school. Back then you only had to be the fastest or bravest to get a title like that. Then puberty hit and it didn’t matter how fast Erica ran, she was just a girl with low self esteem. 

Boyd grinned and faced front. “Yeah, Boss,” he said, and Erica steadfastly looked ahead of her. She interpreted that Boss with a totally different connotation, but she kind of liked that version too.

\---

They hit the ghost motherload; they stumbled across the dinner party.

“Behind you, Scott!” Erica yelled and lined up a shot that took two ghosts out at once. 

Boyd must have taken care of it because the ghost was gone by the time Scott turned. Good thing they’d managed to work out the teamwork thing earlier in the food supply stockroom because they’d be shit out of luck otherwise. 

Erica caught a lady ghost’s attention and it started to move towards her in slow, measured steps. It opened its mouth to say something, but if it was anything like the last ghost’s words Erica wasn’t inclined to hear them. 

She pulled her pistol in front of her and lined up the sights, aiming for a headshot more for fun than anything else since the exorcism stone only had to brush the ghost for it to kill it. 

“Sorry Sweetcheeks, I like the dress and I’m happy you’re having a good time at this party, but I’m saving the last dance for someone a little less dead,” she said and pulled the trigger. 

Only nothing came out. Erica pulled it again, and it clicked at her. A third time warranted another click. The ghost took a step towards her.

Shit. _Shit_.

She was out of magic hoodoo bullets. What a freaking huge rookie mistake.

“Please...” the ghost’s voice said, and it was really starting to grate on her nerves that their words reached her ears way after they were actually said. They could at least be original at that, because it was starting to sound a whole lot like the first ghost she’d had the pleasure of meeting. 

Erica’s hand rested on her laser gun, fingers tracing the edges of the leather holster. She could shoot that off, but it really wouldn’t do much as far as the ghosts went. 

The ghost stepped forward and Erica tried to back away, only to find her shoulders pressed to the hallway wall. Double shit on a stick. 

It reached out, curious, and pressed its fingers to Erica’s lips. She let her eyes slip closed and tried to ignore the icicles pawing at her face, chilling her to the bone. 

“The one who sees all is waiting, watching with their white eyes.”

The fingers slipped off and warmth returned. What was the ghost doing? The fingers didn’t come back. When Erica opened her eyes again the ghost’s face wasn’t filling her vision, but Scott’s was. It’s funny. She didn’t hear the shot, but the ghost was gone. 

“Please save us,” the ghost finished. 

“There’s a ghost behind you, your five o’clock,” she said lazily and Scott whipped around to take care of it. It disappeared in a flurry of smoke and suddenly Scott was in front of her again, cocky grin on his face. 

“Saved you,” he said, like he was letting Erica in on some big joke. 

She raised an eyebrow and shifted to rest most of her weight on the opposite foot. “Funny, I’m pretty sure I just saved you.” 

Scott glanced over his shoulder at where the ghost he’d just shot had been standing, then back at Erica. 

“Not that one, the one before it. The one touching you.” 

“Best way to say you’re welcome is to give me some ammo. I’m out.” 

Don’t get Erica wrong, she was definitely grateful for the rescue. She wasn’t exactly the type who yearned to die shitting their pants from a ghost attack so any amount of ghost killing was appreciated, but her pride was a little too big for her to say thanks. 

Her eyes followed the trail of ghosts until they rested on Boyd, who was doing all right in the kicking ass department if Erica could say so herself. It was stupid but she really didn’t want to be a damsel in distress, even if it meant never admitting she needed help. She wanted to be strong. 

Scott shook his head, one side of his mouth pulled tight. “I’m on my last magazine. I’ve got nothing to offer.” 

Erica sighed and leaned her head back, not even bothering to make sure it got a soft landing against the wall. There were at least twenty ghosts around them, and if she was out and Scott was almost there, Boyd probably wasn’t faring any better. 

“Shit,” she muttered, and Scott made a noise of agreement.

Literally minutes later, they were all out of ammunition and standing back to back while Scott radioed Lydia for help. That was the nice thing about having exorcism spells memorized, Erica thought. They might be slower but Lydia would never be defenseless in a group of ghosts since she could not run out of ammo. 

The funny thing was, none of the ghosts were paying them any attention. They were dancing and conversing with each other, but they weren’t heading towards Erica, Scott, or Boyd. It was like they didn’t exist to the ghosts. 

Scott was just finishing up the conversation when something caught Erica’s eye. 

“The exorcism stones are supposed to kill the ghosts right?” she asked, and she heard Scott shove the radio into his pocket. 

“Yeah,” Scott said. “That’s why I don’t like using ‘em much. I’d rather save the ghosts and let them move on than kill ‘em straight out.”

Erica swallowed and gripped her laser gun through her holster for comfort. “Then I don’t think they’re working.”

It was like a cable broke, Scott changed his gears so fast. He placed his chin on Erica’s shoulder, trying to see what she was seeing. She knew the exact moment he figured out by the noise Scott made, like someone stole all the air in the room and he was struggling to breathe.

The first ghost Erica saw, the one Scott and Stiles killed before she knew their names, was dancing maybe twenty feet away.

“That’s impossible. It should be dead. I saw it die with my own eyes.”

“Yeah, well maybe your magic rocks are a little less magic and a little more rock.” 

Scott pulled back off of Erica’s shoulder, shaking his head. “No. Those things are guaranteed to work.” 

“What if they’re not ghosts,” Boyd said, and Erica almost jumped because she’d forgotten he was there. 

He was looking up at something, and Erica picked her head up, trying to find what caught his attention. 

It didn’t take long. In the seam where wall met ceiling, there was a black shaped mass with a white mist seeping out of it. The mist formed a ghost, and then the spot closed and there were no traces of anything that had just happened. 

“Wha?” Erica said, too shell shocked to say much else. In her peripherals, she could see Boyd was just as confused as she was. She wasn’t even sure that what she saw was real. The lights weren’t always reliable, any usual crew aboard the Deliverance could tell anyone that, and they had been fighting or searching for ghosts for a good two and a half hours by then, maybe it was just a combination between a flickering light and a trick of a tired eye.

Then Lydia and Stiles came bursting in with more ammo and Lydia’s supreme skills and they momentarily put that thought in the back of their heads in lieu of some good ol’ ghost ass kicking. 

The more they exorcised them, the faster they came back. The same dark abyss opened and closed and let in more ghosts. It wasn’t always from the ceiling. Some of them came back through the floor, the wall, or a particularly memorable experience where one respawned from a speaker system above Stiles’ head. 

It wasn’t fake. Erica really had seen it, and she didn’t know what to do. Hell, Lydia didn’t even know what to do and Erica realized she’d rather have a know-it-all Lydia than a Lydia who didn’t have the foggiest idea. 

“There’s no we can win, we’re just wasting bullets!” Stiles said, and Erica started moving towards the nearest door in agreement with his call for a retreat. 

She didn’t make it there, though. Three steps in her eyes caught a strange image of Boyd, waist deep in the floor, hands scrabbling at the smooth linoleum to try and gain enough purchase to pull himself out. He wasn’t screaming or calling for help or anything. Just silently struggling by himself, sinking. In distress.

Why he was sinking didn’t cross Erica’s mind, just that he was in trouble and no one but she had noticed, and she could work with that. It was hard to be the hero on the Deliverance when the pilots got all the credit, but this? Saving Boyd would show him, and the hunters aboard the ship, that she was strong. She wasn’t the girl she was at fifteen, self-conscious and easy to make cry. Not anymore. Erica was a knight in shining fucking armor. 

Her feet couldn’t carry her over there fast enough, and somewhere in her run she drew the attention of Scott or Stiles, who screamed for Boyd. 

He was stuck in one of the black messes the ghosts came out of, tendrils of nothingness wrapping around him and sucking him in like he was nothing more than an elephant trapped in a spirited tar pit. Erica wasn’t sure he’d come out the other end as petroleum though, if he came out as anything at all. 

Erica wrapped her hands around Boyd’s body, underneath his armpits, and pulled up. He kept one clammy hand against her forearm, guiding, and she could tell he was panicked from how cold it was. She’d keep that to herself though. Fear was a private feeling, like crushes and sadness, because in her experience sharing it brought her nothing but pain, no matter how much it hurt to keep it inside. 

There was a screeching noise, like when a battery popped in one of the laser cannons and acid leaked down the gears, gumming up and destroying the mechanism, and someone still tried to operate it. Erica’s arms gave a little, and for an instant she thought she’d pulled Boyd free, but that proved untrue when she saw her hands disappear under the black and her vision grew dark. 

She’d been sucked under too.

\---

It was dark, unbelievably so. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open, closed, or if the emptiness around her had sucked them plain out of her head.

The skin on her face was pulled taut, like that time she convinced her mom she’d be okay on the two-hundred foot drop tower her friends wanted to ride at an amusement park and ended up puking everywhere. It might’ve been her birthday then, but Erica couldn’t remember.

There was warmth against her chest, in her arms, and she pulled herself closer, nuzzling her nose against cloth and rough skin. Despite the pain in her stomach and the numbness everywhere else, she was able to focus on that warmth and keep herself contained, in control.

\---

_Twang._

Something solid, something sharp, dug into her skull. 

She opened her eyes. It was dark, but there were colors so it couldn’t have been pitch black. 

_Twang._ The sound echoed through the air, but Erica couldn’t see, couldn’t focus on where it came from.

She closed her eyes, the image of white eyes and pale hands burned in her retinas.

\---

Erica wasn’t warm per se when she woke, but more like she knew she should have been warm and her body wasn’t listening. Like that time she had to make aspirin in chemistry and none of the quantitative tests worked. She knew what the melting point should have been, but no matter what thermometer she used it always melted fifteen degrees too low.

She was on the floor and pressed close to Boyd’s body, or what she was assuming was Boyd’s body. The last thing she remembered was trying to yank him out of a ghost hole so it was the only option she could really think of. 

It was weird and close and Erica wasn’t sure if she should press nearer to the wall of back muscle that was Boyd, or jump away and pretend it never happened.

“Erica?” she heard, and it was soft, unsteady. Nothing more than a whisper really. 

“Yeah?” she replied, though it didn’t reach her ears until a minute or so had passed. And that, that was the scary part. 

Erica’s eyes flew open, and she stood up. Or tried to stand up. Her body tried to move a few seconds after she thought to, and the mix of sensory input and what she thought should happen created dissonance. 

On the third try, she managed to stand up, and she nearly let out a wet breath, the precursor to the body shaking sobs she hadn’t had since she was a teenager. 

They were ghosts. She and Boyd were nothing more than the white wispy cloud people they were trying to kill earlier.

\---

They’d woken up in a section of the men’s locker room, which made Erica laugh far harder than it should’ve, but she’d never been in one before and she was all for latching onto stupid things if it meant ignoring the fact that she was most likely dead. Maybe. A ghost at least. The fact that Boyd had more trouble learning to walk in that form than she did probably accounted for some of the laughter, though.

Boyd didn’t recognize the locker room, but that wasn’t particularly significant since there were five on the Deliverance, and the engineers used the one closest to the engines. They couldn’t hear the engines from there, and Boyd said that was the biggest indication of an engineer locker room. 

It took a few tries, but they eventually got the locker room door to open. It wasn’t like their bodies passed through things, Erica remembered the way the ghosts fingers felt on her face and Boyd tried and failed at walking through the wall on the second door opening failure. It was more like her body was moving long after she told it to and she had to imagine twisting the door handle in advance in order for it to work. 

The hallway was empty, and so was the locker room for that matter, and that was pretty weird. She’d never seen a ship so desolate. 

“You recognize anything yet?” Erica asked when they wandered down what felt like their four hundredth empty hallway, because she sure hadn’t, and that was super freaking unusual. The Deliverance wasn’t big enough for her to get lost in. And sure, it was a large ship but it was a freight ship so half of it was actually one giant cargo hold.

“No,” Boyd said. “but I don’t think this is the Deliverance.” 

Erica grunted in agreement, and the conversation died. She didn’t like the silence very much, especially since it put a huge emphasis on the thoughts she resoundly did not want to think about, like how she was possibly dead, but there was a wall of awkwardness between her and Boyd that she didn’t know how to climb. She wasn’t sure he even wanted to talk to her, considering he chose to sink in the ghost pit without crying out for help. 

“There’s a lounge up ahead,” Erica said. “Check it out?” 

She intentionally left the question vague. If Boyd wanted to split, wanted to be alone, he could interpret it that way, and if he didn’t, then he could interpret it that way too. With the way he was walking slightly behind her with as much distance laterally between them, she was afraid he’d rather be alone. And that sort of sucked, because she hated remembering what alone felt like.

“Yeah, sure, we can do that,” Boyd said with a shrug. “Maybe we’ll actually find someone and ask them what the hell is going on.”

We. He said we. Erica let out a sigh of relief, and she was happy Boyd wouldn’t hear it until later. Maybe then he wouldn’t know what she sighed about.

They turned into the lounge, and surprise surprise, it was just as empty as the rest of the ship so far. 

Erica walked over to a board game shelf next to a bulletin board, which only had posters about some parts shop in Station 3 and a dinner party, a calendar, and a safety notice about keeping hands clean to stop the spread of disease pinned on it. She didn’t see where Boyd went, but she could hear his footsteps walk past her and into the sitting area 

She fiddled with the boxes, pushing down the tape on the corners of broken boxes and straightening things so a box didn’t look like it was going to take a dive off the shelf any second. There was a curious looking metal tin behind Monopoly, so of course Erica grabbed it. 

“Erica?” Boyd said.

“Yeah?” she said after a pause, trying to get the tin to open with her stupid ghost hands.

“We’re on the S.S. Hope.”

Erica paused a moment with her fiddling and scrunched her nose up in thought. “The Hope? Wasn’t that the ship that...”

“The ship that blew up ten years ago on it’s maiden voyage, yeah.” 

Erica dropped the tin, not even trying to soften the sound it made as it hit the metal floor, and abruptly turned around. Boyd was hunched over an end table covered in newspapers, all titled with “S.S. Hope.” She reached behind her to grab the shelving unit, needing the extra support without wanting to broadcast to the world, aka Boyd, that her knees were feeling week. 

“So what’s that mean...? That we’ve traveled back in time?” She said breathlessly. Ten years ago, shit. She was only nine or ten back then. But time travel meant she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t really a ghost. 

“I think so, yeah.” 

They both sighed at the same time. What did that even mean? Why did they end up ten years in the past, or hell, why did they end up ten years in the past as _ghosts_.

Erica reached down to pick up the metal tin she’d dropped but paused when a poster on the bulletin board caught her eye. 

_S.S. Hope Maiden Voyage Dinner Party and Dance! All are welcome and encouraged to come. Please let us show you what the S.S. Hope has to offer on Wednesday, the fifth of Taurus._

“What day did you say it blew up?” She asked, setting the tin back on the game shelf and reaching for the poster. 

“I didn’t. But the fifth or sixth of Taurus I think? It was a day or two after my mom’s birthday I remember. My dad almost got her tickets for the S.S. Hope. “

“Oh.” 

The _dinner party_. That was where all the ghosties back in their time were going. Must be why ship felt like it was abandoned. 

“Well I think I know why we haven’t seen anyone yet,” Erica said, pulling the poster completely off the board. 

Boyd came up close to see the poster in her hands from over her shoulder, and Erica could feel the reverberations of his speech against her back, but she knew she wouldn’t hear what he said for a while. Which left him pressed up against her back, the weird not-heat seeping into her body. 

It made her think of the time when she broke her arm. Erica was six or seven and was racing the boy she sometimes let win against her in a footrace because his smile when he did made her stomach hurt in a good way. She must have tripped over a rock or something, because next thing she remembered her arm was in a funny shape and the boy she was racing was hugging her from behind to keep her from crying. She cried anyway, hell, even he cried, but the intent was nice, and this felt a whole lot like that, outside of the whole broken arm and crying deal. 

“Why?”

Ah, and there it was, Boyd’s voice. 

“They’re all at a party,” she replied, turning to press the poster to his chest once her words finally materialized. 

He grabbed the paper and Erica was careful not to let their fingers touch. She was becoming increasingly aware of her attraction to him, but she didn’t want to let that develop into a crush. She’d never be able to survive the whole ghost business if she did. 

“I think that’s our ticket home then.”

“What is? I’m pretty sure I don’t see a time travel train ticket booth anywhere near here.” 

Boyd gave her a curious look at her choice of words, but Erica shrugged it off. Sassing wasn’t easy when she was half-scared shitless, but hey, points for alliteration. 

“The party,” Boyd said, sounding out each syllable carefully. “All the ghosts where we’re from are wearing dancing clothes, yeah? And we got here as ghosts through one of those dark mist tunnels. So maybe theirs are in the hall,” Boyd lifted up the poster to read something, “on floor four.”

\---

The whole fourth floor was one big dancehall, apparently, because Erica could see nothing but miles of tables and dancing folks around her and she’d chosen a random staircase. Well not miles, but certainly long enough to rival most spaceships Erica had been on.

“I’m not seeing anything like what sucked us in,” Boyd said and Erica grunted in agreement. 

The floor was normal, the roof was normal, and Erica wasn’t even sure if the passengers had even seen another ghost like them before. They kept smiling and saying how realistic and awesome the holograms were whenever one of them came near. Which was better than them screaming, Erica supposed, but if she and Boyd were the first they saw, there were no others from the Deliverance that had arrived before them. 

“I guess the portals haven’t started showing up in their time stream yet,” Erica said, running her fingers through her hair. 

“Think this was a bust?”

“Yeah,” Erica sighed. “Stick a fork in it, I think we’re done here.”

They turned and walked back towards the general area of the staircase they came up in, Erica in front leading the way. They were maybe thirty steps away when they heard the laughter, a low, dark sounding voice that was pretty clearly female despite it. 

“Ghosts on _my_ ship. Again? You got a lotta nerve coming back here kiddos.” 

She stepped out from behind a wall, standing in the open doorway to the stairwell, wearing all black and carrying a crossbow aimed pretty clearly at the two of them. She quite frankly looked younger than Erica so the “kiddos” comment was a little eye-roll worthy, but the hardness in her eyes told a totally different story. 

Hunters. The S.S. Hope had hunters on it as well. 

_Twang._

The bolt flew forward, heading towards Erica in a tight spin and Erica knew her body wasn’t going to react fast enough. She’d gotten a little more used to the time between her thoughts and actions, and the point so and so seconds it was going to take for the bolt to hit her was definitely not enough time. 

“Erica, get down!” she heard Boyd say somewhere behind her, and it was fairly obvious that was supposed to happen earlier. 

Something large and heavy slammed into her back and she fell forward, taking whatever was on her back down with her. The bolt whizzed past her, clattering onto the ground somewhere behind her. 

“Man, you’re stupid,” the girl said, boots clicking against the floor as she walked forward, loading another bolt into her crossbow. She took another step closer and aimed it at Erica’s head, grinning. 

“You don’t jump on top of the girl to get her out of the way, kid,” she said, nudging at what was on top of Erica--apparently Boyd--with her boot. “That just gets the both of you stuck.”

 _Twang._

The crossbow went off and Erica didn’t even have time to get scared before her vision went black.

\---

Erica woke up in the men’s locker room again, the same place as last time she came to. The time portion was a little disorienting, because she had no idea if she ended up in the same time, or instantly after she was shot in the head, or if some sort of time had passed between then and when she came to. The logistics made her head hurt.

She stood up and walked over to a bench, sitting when she reached it. Chances were, Boyd was going to come through soon too, so she only had to wait. 

There were no black mist portals, no other ghosts on the ship. It was like the ghosts on the Deliverance served no other purpose but to bring Erica and Boyd together and put them on the S.S. Hope. Like they were meant to be on the ship the night the front end blew up and killed tens of thousands of people. 

Erica rested her head in her hands, sighing. The ghosts that had talked to her, touched her face, they were all sayings something similar. Things like “please” and “save us,” like they knew Erica was going to end up somewhere, end up on the ship they came from. 

The floor opened up then and Erica watched the white mist coming out of the center, drawing Boyd and filling his form with its presence. He woke almost immediately, gasping and holding his heart like it’d simply stopped working. 

Erica crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back into the lockers behind her. 

“That was dumb, y’know.”

Boyd licked his lips and tried to make his legs work. He was standing tall and brushing off imaginary dust from his clothes on the second try. 

“What? Saving you?”

“Yeah. We didn’t know we’d end up here still among the time traveling undead. If you’d let her shoot me, you could’ve gotten away.” 

On some level, Erica knew they probably wouldn’t have died. The ghosts kept coming back on the Deliverance, after all. Boyd raised an eyebrow at her. He’d thought it too. 

“It’s not a bad thing, asking for help,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “You don’t have to be strong all the time.” 

The thing was, Erica wanted to be strong. It wasn’t for anyone or anything but herself, really. She’d been weak almost all her life, and for the first time in her life she’d finally felt strong, in control. She didn’t want to be weak anymore. Despite middle school, despite high school, she’d kept on. Erica knew how to assemble and operate over two hundred types of modern weaponry, if that wasn’t strong she didn’t know what else was. 

“I could say the same thing to you, mister I-refuse-to-call-for-help-when-I’m-sinking-in-a-ghost-portal,” she said, and it came out softer than she expected. 

Boyd ran his hands over his shirt, smoothing out wrinkles that didn’t exist, and Erica’s eyes followed the movement. He was well defined and extremely muscular for an engineer, she noted as the cloth pulled taut over his arms and stomach with his movements. And then she realized, they were cut from the same cloth. She with her guns and he with his muscles. They both wanted to be strong in the only way they knew how. 

“So what should we do now,” he said eventually, looking at Erica. And Erica pulled herself up off the bench, bring them eye-to-eye, well as close to that as possible because Boyd was tall and she was only the higher end of average in heels. 

“I think...I think we’re supposed to save them, keep the ship from blowing up.” 

“But won’t that mess up the time stream? And everything I heard about it said it was a terrorist attack. How are we supposed to stop a _terrorist attack_?” 

“Well we’re here for a reason, so the time stream is probably already messed up. And uh, I’m pretty good at pulling crap out of my butt, taking problems on as they come.” 

Boyd sighed and started walking to the locker room door. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do this.”

\---

They walked back to the dance hall, the only connection they had really, since that was where the ghosts were coming from in their time. There were still no portals or other ghosts. They literally had nothing.

Boyd suggested they check out the engines because that was where the bomb was supposed to hit apparently, according to whatever Boyd remembered about the explosion. Erica didn’t see how that would help them, but she figured it was mostly just Boyd wanting to see what kept the S.S. Hope in the air. She understood that feeling. She felt that way about the laser cannons, and hell, if she told Boyd that they should check those out since they’d need to figure out how to shoot the ship down, he’d probably listen. 

The engineers shooed them off with curious faces, so Boyd didn’t get his wish, but maybe it was for the best. 

“This thing got a time limit on it you think?” Boyd asked as they headed back upstairs to the dance hall. As always he was a few steps behind, and Erica briefly entertained that he walked so far back because he was admiring the view. Her view. And it made her giddy to think about.

“Dunno,” Erica answered. “We don’t know exactly when the bomb hit, yeah? So it feels like we’re just stuck sitting and waiting for the terrorist ship or whatever to hit range.” 

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I think since the ghosts clearly all came from that party, we’ve got to be done and out of here by the end. “

“Before the portals close.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Boyd patted his pockets and seemed surprised that something was in one of them. When he pulled out the poster she’d pulled off the bulletin board all ghostified like them, she was surprised too. “It says here the party officially ends at midnight. So the portals for home should be open between now and midnight. We’ve got to be done and out of here before that.”

Erica bit down a laugh. “So we’re like cinderella? Well, better keep ahold of your glass slippers, Boyd, because I don’t think we want any prince on here chasing after us.” 

Boyd glared at her, but she didn’t worry. His lips were curling up just the littlest bit, and she knew he wasn’t angry. His mouth started forming words and Erica turned back towards where they were walking, smiling and waiting for whatever he said to finally reach her ears. 

A reflection in a nameplate on one of the doors caught her eye while she was turning, however, and she swore she saw a person. It wasn’t worrying all by itself, but in the next nameplate they hit she saw the gun in his hand.

Shit. It was another hunter. 

Erica didn’t pick up her speed or glance back at the man, no matter how much she wanted to. He was clearly tracking them, waiting for something, though Erica didn’t know what. He wasn’t going to shoot them then. 

She spoke. Opened her mouth and tried to fit in as many words as possible in a few seconds so if the hunter did come after them, she’d maybe have a defense because there was no way she could fight with her time delayed ghost body. 

“Does that make you my fairy godmother?” Boyd’s voice filtered through, and Erica made the mistake of looking back at him. She aimed for Boyd’s head obviously, smiling and attempting to look him in the eye because Erica’s pretty sure that might have been a flirt attempt. Maybe. Hopefully. 

But she missed and looked right over his shoulder instead. Her smile dropped off her face so fast it was like someone slapped it off. She had locked eyes with the hunter, and the hunter didn’t look happy to see her. 

Boyd caught the look and turned, confused. When he saw the hunter he moved in front of Erica, shielding her with his body, and Erica wanted to punch him. He had a freaking huge hero complex and she was not going to be his pretty damsel eye-candy. 

The shot hit before Erica’s words did, and Boyd’s body started to disappear in a cloud of smoke, revealing that the hunter was several yards closer. 

“Please don’t hurt us! We’re from the future and we’re here to help.” Erica’s voice filtered through just as the smokey remnants of Boyd completely disappeared. 

The hunter brought his gun down a fraction. Just enough to show he was listening but entirely prepared to shoot again if she tried anything. Erica’s heart thudded in her chest, and it was stupid because it wasn’t like she could die. She hoped. She wasn’t sure if ghosts got third chances, but for Boyd’s sake she hoped they did. 

“Telepaths?” the man said, and Erica swallowed down her stomach. 

She shook her head no, but slowly so that the hunter didn’t end up shooting anyway at a sudden movement, and held up a finger in a “wait” gesture. 

“No,” she said. “For some reason our voices are delayed.”

Erica tried to count how long it took for her voice to sound, but she lost track at thirty seconds. Her heartbeat got in the way with its unsteady thumpa-thump. 

“How can you prove you aren’t ghosts,” he says after a pause. 

Erica shrugged. “I can’t, not really. But I can tell you that my friend you just shot will be back here in a few.”

“That’s impossible. I shot you with--”

Erica tried to interrupt, forgetting her voice was delayed. 

“--dead man’s dust.” 

Her voice trailed after. “Ghost killing crap, right? Well you weren’t the first to try that today.” 

“You should be dead then.”

“Well I’m not. So clearly I’m not a ghost.” 

The hunter lowered his gun a little more, though it wasn’t completely away from her. He could easily shoot her still, but her breathing eased a little anyway. 

“When will your friend be back.”

Erica licked her lips and rocked back onto her heels. “Dunno. We were shot together last time by a blonde chick with anger problems. But I do know where we can wait for him.”

\---

The hunter was reluctant to follow her, and for good reason really she supposed. He was a hunter and she looked like a ghost. Maybe. Erica still wasn’t clear on what actual ghosts were supposed to look like, but the hunter obviously thought she and Boyd looked enough like them to be wary of trusting them.

They met Boyd halfway to the locker room, so apparently they did respawn directly after the kill. 

The hunter eased up a little, and Erica guessed that it was because he finally had proof that they weren’t ghosts. Or at the very least that Boyd wasn’t, since the bullet coated in dead man’s dust didn’t kill him. 

Boyd was a different matter, however. He kept glancing between Erica and the hunter, standing right between them as if he could do shit to keep the hunter from shooting them if he wanted. 

The hunter let the muzzle drop to the floor almost entirely, and with a half grin on his face he said, “So. Time travelers?”

\---

The hunter took them to his room and shut the door behind him. He set his firearm down in a giant urn next to the door, like it was an umbrella, and turned to face them slowly, his back to the door.

“So, I’m Chris,” he said with a smile, but his arms were crossed over his chest so Erica knew he wasn’t feeling as open and friendly as he was trying to appear. “Argent.” 

“Erica Reyes,” she chirped. 

Boyd glanced at Erica, glaring questions into the side of her face, before he answered. “Boyd,” he said gruffly, and Erica grinned at him in encouragement. 

“How many of you are there?” Chris asked. 

Erica and Boyd exchanged a look. He was testing the waters, trying to figure out what was going on, but Erica noticed his lack of sharing his own numbers. There must not have been enough hunters on the ship for Chris to use them as a bargaining tool. 

“Just the two of us that we know of,” Boyd said. 

Chris raised an eyebrow. “That you _know_ of.”

“There were at least sixty on our ship back in our time. We haven’t seen anyone but us here.” 

“I see,” Chris said, dropping his head down and rubbing his temples with a tired hand. “Tell me about this time travel business then.” 

“We’re from the Deliverance around ten years in the future,” Erica started. “These ghost looking things started showing up on our ship and we decided, hey, let’s take care of them. So we did. But they kept coming back no matter how many times we shot them with magic bullets. And then me and Boyd got sucked here in this black portal thing, looking like the ghosts we were shooting earlier, and it turns out we’re ten years in the past. On the day this ship blows up, by the way. Which is why we’re trying to help. We’re trying to stop the ship from blowing up.” 

“All the reports say it was a terrorist attack from another ship,” Boyd added quietly. “So if we can somehow change the course of the ship or find out where the ship is so we can shoot it, that’s what we want to do.”

Chris sighed and his shoulders hunched over, visibly tired. “Look, I’ve got...no, um. I’m not sure if I believe you, but I’ve got a wife and a kid that I don’t want to leave behind if this thing _does_ blow up, and you guys certainly aren’t acting like the other ghosts we’ve encountered. I’ve got something that can help, if you’re telling the truth.”

He walked past the two of them, and Boyd gave him a wide berth, like Chris was suddenly going to turn around with a knife in his hand and stab them. He approached an end table and opened the top drawer, pulling out an older laptop. Of course, back in this time it was probably high tech and state of the art. 

Chris pulled up a sonar screen and threw a hand over his mouth, face twisted in confusion. He beckoned them over and Boyd followed tentatively, peering at the screen over Chris’ shoulder, but Erica hung back a little. She hadn’t learned to read a sonar before she dropped out of school and she didn’t really have the drive to let them, especially Boyd, know that. 

“It’s not...”

“Yeah.” 

“Try thirty clicks to the north east.”

Erica couldn’t understand the little she did hear, but she could tell from Boyd’s back that it wasn’t good. The muscles in his broad shoulders kept tensing, and he’d roll them back in an attempt to shake it loose whenever he said something new. 

Eventually Boyd pulled back from the screen, sighing. The diagnosis wasn’t good then. 

“Are you sure it came from the north?” Chris asked and he shut his laptop down with a click. 

Boyd shook his head yes. “Yeah, all the reports said the front end blew up, blowing out the engines, and I know for a fact that curvature bombs weren’t invented yet so there’s no way it could come from anywhere south. It could have come from the top or bottom, but the sonar said no for those directions too.” 

They grew quiet for a few, like they were realizing the same thing but didn’t want to share it. The only problem was that Erica did not have all the pieces they did to come to the same conclusion. 

“So what’s up?” she asked, trying to hide her irritation. Erica didn’t want to make them think she was angry at them. Just herself. If only she’d been just a little bit stronger and made it through another year of school, then she’d know what they were talking about.

“We couldn’t find any ships,” Chris answered. 

“And with no ships close enough to get here in ten hours, there’s no way a terrorist ship could have blown this place apart. Meaning it was either an inside job or the engines malfunctioned.”

“Or the terrorist ship’s got the power to time travel--like we did,” Erica said. 

Boyd paused with his mouth wide open, and Erica nearly snorted at how ridiculous it looked. Gaping fish mouth wasn’t an attractive look on Boyd.

“No, I didn’t even think of that, but shit that puts a whole lot more on our plate.”

They sat in silence for a bit, taking in all their options. 

“So what are you going to do?” Chris eventually asked. 

Erica was completely blank. Up until then, her plan was to shoot the terrorist motherfuckers with a laser cannon, and to find out that there probably wasn’t a ship to shoot? Put a freaking huge hole in her plans. 

She looked over at Boyd, who seemed deep in thought with some sort of idea. It was a few seconds before he spoke. “There’s no way we can interview every person on this ship to find out if they’re the terrorist. Everything I read said the front end blew up, around the engine area. So I was thinking, what if there was a bomb planted there, around the engines. Even something small would start off a chain reaction and debilitate, if not completely destroy, the ship.”

“So you’re suggesting we stake out the engine room,” Chris said. 

Boyd nodded his head in agreement, foregoing the minute or so it would take for him to agree verbally. 

“That sounds like a wonderful plan,” a voice said, and it wasn’t Chris or Boyd’s but it was most definitely a man’s. 

Erica nearly jumped out of her seat, because holy hell she did not realize anyone else was in there. But there was. Leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest was an older man with a smile on his face. It wasn’t a nice smile, but something that reminded her of Lydia’s. Like he knew what was supposed to happen and what he wanted to happen, and was damn determined to make it so if anyone tried to go against him. 

“Dad,” Chris stated, shutting his laptop. He was wide-eyed and nervous looking, like a little kid who’d been caught with a handful of cookies right before dinner, and that nearly made Erica smile. “This is Erica and Boyd.” 

Chris’ dad bowed his head slightly towards the two of them before turning back to Chris. “A pleasure. Now Chris. Do you want to explain to me why you’re housing two ghosts in the room?” 

Chris shifted, frowning. “They’re humans. From the future.”

“Time travelers?” his dad said, eyebrows high on his forehead. “How quaint.” 

Boyd relayed the story they’d told Chris, but Erica couldn’t tell if Chris’ dad--Gerard--believed a word of it. He just stood there nodding his head with that stupid Lydia-like smile on his face, and Erica couldn’t read him. Not at all. 

Whatever the reason, Gerard decided to help too. And to say Erica was surprised would’ve been an understatement, but hell, she’d be lying if she didn’t appreciate it. Stopping a terrorist wasn’t exactly an easy job, she figured. 

Gerard would distract the engineers or whoever was around in front of the engine room enough for Erica and Boyd to slip in, where they’d camp out and wait for the terrorist. Chris, some girl named Kate, and later Gerard would patrol the upper and lower corridors and guard the stairwells leading to the engine room to try and catch him or her there.

The idea seemed pretty awesome in theory, but Erica soon found that waiting around in an engine room was freaking boring as hell. And unnecessarily loud. But Boyd was more accustomed to that. 

He was in his element, running his hands over the different parts of the machine and stopping to fiddle with something when he got curious. To be quite honest, Erica thought a room with a giant engine in it was pretty dull, but she was willing to bet money on Boyd feeling the same way about her laser cannons. 

“So,” She started, leaning against what looked like a fairly large tank. She got the feeling it was supposed to be really hot by the way Boyd looked at her when she caught his attention, like she was crazy, but she couldn’t feel it. Being a ghost had its perks sometimes, she guessed. “Boyd. You not have a last name or something?” 

“What?” she heard a little later, Boyd’s voice muffled by whatever he was doing behind a giant wall of pipes and wires. 

“You only ever tell people to call you Boyd. So. No last name?” 

Boyd’s head popped up from behind the wall, giving Erica a curious look. “You think Boyd is my first name?”

Erica shrugged. “Well it’s not as ridiculous as _Stiles_ is.” 

“I’m pretty sure that was a nickname,” Boyd said, grinning. 

“Don’t change the subject.” 

Boyd sighed, but he was smiling. “Boyd’s my last name. My first name is, uh, well i’m a fourth so I think that explains pretty well how bad my first name is.” 

Erica tapped her foot lightly against the floor and smoothed out imaginary wrinkles in her shirt. Unsure. Were they flirting? She wanted to flirt. Maybe. If Boyd liked her back she most definitely wanted to flirt. 

“Okay, but I’m gonna find out what it is one day,” she said, a grin on her face. That could be considered friendship flirting she supposed, if friendships had non-pick-up pick-up lines.

Boyd smiled back and ducked back behind the machine. “Good luck.” 

Eventually, Boyd got tired of whatever he was doing (and on some level Erica thought maybe he was worried about getting caught by one of the engineers whenever Gerard figured he’d distracted them enough) and they sat side by side in a little alcove. There were pipes all along the wall, throwing up hot steam at uneven intervals, and if Erica wasn’t a ghost she’d probably be panicking about how frizzy her hair was from the humidity. 

She could hear muffled voices somewhere outside the engine room, and they had to be shouts really if she could hear them over the engine from where she was. But maybe time travelers got enhanced hearing or something. Boyd was warm in that not heat sort of way against her thigh, and she liked that. Erica would like the real actual heat from a non-ghost body better, but it was nice. Intimate. And it made her heart flutter in her stomach. 

Erica turned slightly and caught Boyd looking in the general area of her chest, and she raised an eyebrow at him. The thing was, she didn’t mind too much if he was. It felt good to be liked, wanted, even if only for her cleavage. 

Boyd caught her gaze and realized what it looked like. “No, uh, I was just looking at your necklace. It’s very nice. A triskele right?” 

She glanced down and looked at it, even though she was well aware of what it was. It’d taken three hours alone to bend the wire in the shape, let alone the time it took to string the beads on. 

“Yeah it is.Thanks, I made it actually,” she said. 

Boyd seemed surprised, but in a good way. Like he wasn’t expecting something so good to be handmade. “Oh really? Good job. Do you have any other hobbies?” 

Erica scratched the back of her neck, a sheepish grin on her face. “Well, um, I knit. And zumba. And uh, cook.” 

“Oh?”

“Yeah, pretty surprising right?” she said, laughing nervously. Were they flirting _now_? “So girly.”

“No that’s cool!” Boyd said. “I actually know how to knit too. Made my roommate a pair of socks last year for the holidays.”

And Erica definitely had not been expecting that. But it was nice. 

“Really? Make me a pair this year. I’ll make you-” she swallowed, gathering up her courage, and ran her eyes down Boyd’s form. Clearly checking him out, she thought. “-a sweater.” 

Boyd shifted under her gaze. He didn’t answer. 

Her hands felt clammy against the floor. 

They sat in silence for a while, just waiting and listening for other signs of life. An engineer or two walked through once or twice, checking, but they never noticed Erica or Boyd in the little alcove.

“I’m really surprised they used this engine set up in the S.S. Hope,” Boyd said, and Erica made a noise of encouragement since she really didn’t know what to say to that. 

“Do you see that set of nuts by that pipe shaped kind of like the letter G?” he said, pointing at something, but Erica couldn’t really tell what. She nodded her head anyway though.

“If you loosen the second one from the bottom left, that pipe will start to jiggle when fuel’s injected into the system, and knock that over there. Some other stuff happens, and in half an hour you’ve got an engine explosion ready to happen. It’s usually checked pretty often if that’s the case.” 

They’d seen two engineers in the past hour. Check it often her _ass_. 

“Sorry, I’m talking too much about shit people don’t care about,” he said quietly, and Erica almost didn’t hear it over the engines.

“No it’s, uh. It’s fine. I don’t care if you’re smart and talk smart.” It was a little overwhelming, sure, but she wasn’t listening to increase her knowledge. It was just nice seeing someone talk about things they were passionate about. 

It was quiet for a while again, and Erica couldn’t feel Boyd’s leg against hers anymore. But it was in a good way, like their shared body heat had equalized and her body recognized his leg as a part of her own. 

Boyd let his head fall back against the wall behind him, and he held his gaze on the ceiling. 

“I only agreed to help fight the ghosts and shit because I thought you were pretty,” he said, and Erica nearly choked. 

“Not ‘cause you wanted the crew safe?” she asked, her voice a little high-pitched. Desperate. 

Boyd picked his head up off the wall and shifted his legs. She could feel his knee against hers again. 

“Hm? Nah, Lydia was bluffing. I cared more about my job than getting rid of the ghosts faster. Here’s hoping I didn’t lose it while I goofed off shooting holograms, or whatever it was Scott said.”

But spending time with her, the potential for her to like him too, that was worth more than his job. No wonder guys got themselves in trouble over girls, but hey, Erica was pretty happy he did it. 

She picked at the fabric around her pockets where it was fraying and swallowed once, twice. 

“You wanna maybe...go out sometime?” she asked. “After this is done and we’re back home I mean. Or at the station.” 

“Yeah, um,” Boyd said quietly. “I’d like that.”

“Cool,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say. 

It made her feel stupid but she’d never asked a guy out before, and hell, the only date she’d had was in eighth grade when her mom asked their weird neighbor to go to the middle school graduation dance with her. He’d thrown up on her dress and she’d been called “Chunks” at least until high school started. But this was better than that. She trusted Boyd not to throw up on her uniform and if one of the cannon-boys made fun of her for it if he did, she’d refuse to make cookies for their birthday. And everyone loved her cookies.

Despite the giddiness she felt in her stomach, despite the warmth in her hand when she’d reached over and grabbed Boyd’s, despite everything, Erica knew something wasn’t right when the clock in the far corner of the room read eleven pm. 

Nothing had happened. Nothing. The engineers stopped coming in, there was no terrorist, and definitely no bombs. And they had one hour before their magic horses turned to mice and their carriage to a pumpkin, and they were stuck ten years in the past. 

“Somethings not right,” she said, and she reluctantly let go of Boyd’s hand to stand up. The room felt stuffy for some reason, suffocating even though she shouldn’t be able to feel it in the first place. 

“I agree,” Boyd said, and he stood up too. 

They came to an agreement without words, and walked out of the engine room. What they found outside was nothing like what Erica expected. 

There were four or five bodies piled on top of each other right outside the door, shriveled and pale like someone had sucked the life clear out of them. 

Blood roared in her ears, but even through that she could hear Boyd dry heaving in the corner. It took all of her self-control not to do the same. 

The top body rolled off and fell right in front of Erica’s feet. If her stupid delayed movement ghost body hadn’t moved fast enough it probably would have landed on her. The face looked familiar though, even with it’s wrinkled skin and sunken, glossy eyes. 

Then it hit her. _Shit_. 

“It’s the first ghost,” she said, her voice wobbling. “The first ghost I saw on the Deliverance.” 

He was wearing a greenish-grey coverall suit Erica assumed was the ship’s uniform instead of dancing clothes, but that was still definitely the first ghost. 

Boyd came up close behind her, she could feel his heat against her back, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “ _What?_ What does that mean? Does that mean whatever did this to them did it to us back on the ship? That why we’re ghosts or whatever here?” 

Erica swallowed back another wave of nausea. “I. I don’t know. But I don’t think so.” 

She refused to think so. “Let’s head back up to the dance hall.”

\---

There were bodies lining the entire way there, and Erica had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Sitting and growing like a tumor she’d never be able to cut out.

They’d been a stairwell away when they heard the sucking noises. On some level, Erica was absolutely terrified. Bodies looking shriveled up like someone had stuck a straw in their cranium and had themselves a milkshake, coupled with a mysterious sucking noise? Fucking horrifying. But she and Boyd were there to fix it, whatever _it_ was. It was their big moment to shine.

Erica peered around the corner to the doorway carefully, crouched low enough to the ground so that if whatever or whoever was facing the door she wouldn’t be seen immediately. Boyd followed the motion, and it felt kind of awkward to have both their bodies in such a small space. 

But they had a date planned, after all this stuff was done. She could suck it up and make sure that date happened. 

It was Gerard. 

It seemed almost too easy, to find him with his mouth on someone’s lips and sucking them dry. It explained his willingness to help them, get them stuck in the engine room and away from him, she supposed. 

The body fell to the floor with a smack, and Gerard wiped his mouth. Boyd practically bolted away, but Erica was oddly fascinated. She was alone and she was watching the bad _something_ do evil things. The adrenaline rush was exhilarating. 

Gerard turned slowly, facing the door, and Erica made herself as small as possible. She couldn’t tell where he was looking though. His eyes were white as snow. 

Erica flung back, her heart hammering in her chest. The adrenaline rush was no longer a good kind, not at all. 

The ghost told her, it fucking _told her_. The one with white eyes was watching her, waiting for her. It wanted her there.

She ran back towards the engine room, passing Boyd on his own retreat. She didn’t even care if Gerard followed her. Chances were she was probably seen anyway. 

And when she reached it she looked and looked for the G-shaped pipe and the nuts next to it. It wasn’t a terrorist, it was _her_. She caused the ship to blow up. But she couldn’t see any other way. Gerard had to die. 

“I thought it wouldn’t come to this this time,” she heard, and her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. Her hands slid off the nut, appropriately loosened at that point but she didn’t think it mattered much anymore. 

Gerard stood in the doorway, calm and collected as ever, with Boyd gripped in his hand. He wasn’t moving, and Erica didn’t want to think about that. 

“I thought you’d be smarter this time through. Stop the terrorist, remember?” 

“Wh-What are you talking about?” she asked, and she couldn’t bring it in her to care about her voice cracking. 

“The last time? Remember? Though I suppose you don’t since this is another you.” 

Another her? The original Erica, the one who’d set the engines to explode. 

“You didn’t come in talking about terrorists, that’s for sure. Just something about a portal or _whatever_ goes on in that stupid head of yours. But then you caught me with my daughter and a subject, and decided that something like me didn’t deserve to live.” 

He threw Boyd’s limp body to the ground, snarling. “I’m a new lifeform, _Erica_! Why would you kill me? Time bends to _my_ will and I won’t have it! Endangered species don’t deserve to die.” 

“If time bends to your will,” Erica began, taking her eyes off of Boyd’s frame and onto Gerard’s, “why am I here? Why would you bring me, your destruction, here?”

Gerard grinned, taking a step forward. Erica took a step backwards, her heels hitting the edge of the engine. “Because I willed it so. You will die Erica Reyes, and your body will be lost to the time stream.” 

Step. Step. 

Erica’s eyes slid shut. She was going to freaking die.

Step. Step. 

Her heart slowed in her chest, like a premonition. 

“Erica!” 

Her eyes snapped open, because that was _Boyd_. But Boyd was lying limp on the floor from whatever Gerard had done to him. 

No. Boyd was standing just behind Gerard, creeping closer with an angry glare on his face. 

Erica sighed softly, grinning. “Hey Gerard, five o’clock,” she said calmly, and reared her arm back to punch him in the face. 

He stumbled backwards, right into Boyd, who threw him onto the ground. Erica didn’t stay to watch. She bolted out of the room, running past the lounge, the stairwell, the mens locker room. Everything. Until she reached her home, the laser cannon stretch. 

It was just as empty as the rest of the ship, but Erica knew it shouldn’t have been. There should have been at least one person manning the centermost laser, just in case, and when she checked, there was a body laying half out of the cannon seat. 

She looted the body, and it was gross and oddly wet and Erica wanted to throw up, but she found a laser gun and a pistol filled with sparkers, bullets that flashed when they hit the target. And she could work with that.

There were three escape pods and twelve cannons. She could definitely work with that, she just had to wait. 

Only she didn’t have to wait nearly long enough, she felt. Gerard came running through, angry as hell and intent on killing her. Erica didn’t let herself think about Boyd, and what he’d just done to help save her. Save the world. 

“You’re such a little _bitch_ , you know that?” Gerard said, and he charged at her. There was barely enough distance between them for Erica to move out of the way in time. This was going to be a painfully short fight if that didn’t change soon.

She ran towards the escape pod and opened the hatch, steeling herself for what she had to do. 

“Gonna leave the rest of humanity with me, bitch? Gonna run away like the scared little girl you are?” 

Erica closed her eyes, and inhaled once, before she thought about moving. By the time her body had actually started moving, Gerard was practically breathing down her neck. He fell against the escape pod door easily when he reached for a body that wasn’t there. She’d timed it exactly right. 

She pulled out the pistol with the sparker and shot it slightly to the left of Gerard, covering her eyes before her finger had touched the trigger. Gerard didn’t close his eyes fast enough, and he was blinded. Erica took the opportunity to shove him completely into pod and shut the hatch behind him before hitting the release button. 

Gerard was taking a trip to deep space, and sure, he had all the pod controls at his fingertips, but Erica had skills with a laser cannon. 

She took her time to get to the center console, pushing the body completely off when she got there. Gerard wasn’t getting far enough in his pod to even think about surviving the whole ordeal. 

It was simple lining up the shot. She wasn’t completely sure how focused the light was in the cannon, but she gave it about five degrees of error room and hit the escape pod on it’s right side, where the engine was. 

It blew up almost instantly, and Erica let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. It was over. Gerard was dead and she was the hero she had always wanted to be. But where was Boyd? What did Gerard do to him?

But Boyd was there, in the doorway screaming her name. He seemed panicked, frantic even, and Erica couldn’t understand why. She’d killed Gerard. Gerard was dead. 

“The party ended ten minutes ago! We’ve gotta run!” Boyd’s words finally materialized, and _shit_. The portal!

\---

Erica woke up with Stiles and his stupid buzzed head looking down at her. She was on the ship’s nasty floor, but she was safe. She was back on the Deliverance and Gerard was gone.

“Thank goodness you’re alright!” she heard, and she didn’t recognize the voice. There was a girl with dark hair holding her hand, a concerned look on her face. Erica was mostly just happy to see her fleshy toned hand poking between the girl’s fingers. She was no longer a ghost, and that was a freaking great feeling.

“Who...?” she started, and Scott entered her line of sight too. 

“Who’re you?” she continued, and the girl’s face darkened. 

“That’s Allison!” Scott said, looking offended that Erica even asked. “Remember? She saved you from that ghost in the storage room.” 

And Erica didn’t remember, but she nodded her head like she had. 

“We were so worried about you when you and Boyd were sucked into that strange black hole,” the girl, who was apparently Allison and Erica knew her, said. “The ghosts disappeared almost as soon as you left, and then, five minutes later you guys appear again. It was all super, super weird.” 

“Oh. Did the ship blow?” 

Boyd said he went back to the engine room to tighten the nut up after Gerard sent his ghost self back to the locker room, but it made Erica uncomfortable. Just how much had she changed the future by killing Gerard a different way?

Allison tilted her head to the side, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Scott mimicked the pose. 

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“Never mind, I...where is Boyd?” Erica found herself asking, and she was worried that Boyd maybe didn’t like her anymore now that she’d apparently changed the time stream. But Boyd was fine and he was smiling up at her from his place on the floor right next to her. 

She touched his hand carefully, a shy smile on her face. “Thanks for the rescue,” she said softly, and Boyd’s grin widened. 

“I should say the same thing to you, Boss.” And if Erica was braver she’d be kissing him, but hell, not until the first date. She had _plans_. 

“Hmph,” someone grunted, and Erica looked up to see Lydia standing above her, hands on her hips. 

“Sorry to interrupt this this _touching_ moment, but I’ve got an announcement,” Lydia said, and Erica pushed herself up so that she was sitting. Boyd followed suit. 

“Congratulations! We’ve been discussing while you were gone, and we think you’d be a great addition to our ass-kicking team.” 

Erica grinned wide and looked over at Boyd, who mostly just looked pensive. There’s no way she’d had enough adventure yet. No way in hell. 

“I accept your offer,” she said, and Boyd choked on air. 

When he finally got his breathing under control, he said, “Me too. I’ll join too.” 

And Lydia looked pleased, like she didn’t expect anything different. 

“Well, congrats team another job well done,” Lydia said, but her eyes were resting on Erica. If she wanted to know what happened, Erica was all too willing to share it. 

They stalked off, Stiles following behind Lydia like a lost puppy with Scott and Allison shortly behind. 

Erica stood up abruptly and started to follow them. Her new team. And damn if that wasn’t awesome.

“Oh and Boyd?” she said.

“Yeah?” he replied as he stood up, brushing off imaginary dirt from his clothes.

“If we decide to get coffee, I like pumpkin spice.” 

Boyd’s face broke out in a huge grin. “Date’s still on?”

“Yeah, the date’s still on.” 

Erica was damn right all her life. She was always meant to be something bigger, something greater. And now she had Boyd too.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm kind of thinking of making this into a series? Where each person gets their own supernatural adventure. :] They will all follow Erica's reset timeline though. So Kate did not get blown up and Derek's family is most definitely dead, unlike the beginning of this story.


End file.
